ABSTRACT

This book corrects an imbalance in Canadian political literature through offering a conservative account of Canadian political thought.

Across 15 chronologically organized chapters, and with a mixture of established and rising scholars, the book offers an investigation of the defining features and characteristics of Canadian conservative political thought, asking what have Canadian conservative political thinkers and practitioners learned from other traditions and, in turn, what have they contributed to our understanding of conservative political thought today?

Rather than its culmination, Canadian Conservative Political Thought will be the beginning of conservative political thought’s recovery and will spark debates and future research. The book will be a great resource for courses on Canadian politics, history, political philosophy and conservatism, Canadian Studies, and political theory.

part 1|86 pages

A Founding of a Nation among Strangers

chapter 1|18 pages

“Little Platoons and Ancient Traditions”

Edmund Burke's Critique of Imperialism and Contemporary North American Indigenous Anti-Colonialism 1

chapter 2|17 pages

Praying Alone

Tocqueville on the Present State and Probable Future of Quebec

chapter 3|16 pages

John Strachan's Loyalist Political Thought

Tocqueville's “Aristocratic Mores Without Aristocrats”

chapter 4|17 pages

The Sacred Temple of Truth

Thomas D'Arcy McGee's Civic Nationalism

chapter 5|16 pages

Canadian Conservatism and National Developmentalism

Sir John A. Macdonald's Hamiltonian Persuasion

part 2|86 pages

High Toryism, Liberalism, and Globalism

chapter 7|21 pages

Globalist Nihilism, Liberal Relativism, and Tutorialist Statecraft

A Critique of Janet Ajzenstat's Canadian Political Philosophy

chapter 8|17 pages

Ajzenstat versus the Oligarchs

chapter 10|14 pages

“Even More Than International”

Brock Chisholm and the Origins of Canadian Globalist Thought

part 3|90 pages

Culture, Technology, and Place

chapter 11|16 pages

Marshall McLuhan

Canadian Political Philosophy for the Digital Age

chapter 12|15 pages

History as Progress or Reversal?

The Mythical Prognostications of Kojève and McLuhan

chapter 13|16 pages

George Grant, Time, and Eternity

chapter 14|24 pages

Of Homesteaders and Orangemen

An Archeology of Western Canadian Political Identity

chapter 15|13 pages

Globalization through Rose-Tinted Glasses

Schitt's Creek and the Power of Civic Virtue